Managing a Creative Life in a Chaotic World

Vacation or Creative Cross-Training?

I just returned from what I thought was a week long vacation visiting family and friends. While gone, I visited Ashton, Idaho, and Yellowstone National Park, two of the settings for the novel I finished earlier this year. Each day I tried to do some plein air painting, a much loved activity I seldom find time to do at home. While driving through Elko, Nevada, my husband and I discovered the recently opened California Trail Interpretive Center and investigated some possible new non-fiction ideas.

Now that I have a moment to look back over the last ten days, I’m not so sure they weren’t more a form of cross-training for my regular writing and illustrating. I stretched muscles that had long ago atrophied from lack of use. After all, one has to live to write and see to paint, and although I called my time away from home a vacation, it would perhaps be more accurate to call it a retreat. This morning I returned to my office bursting with ideas and anxious to dive in.

What I’ve learned is that getting out of the studio is a good thing- a very good thing and a way to reinvest in our work – as long as it isn’t just another form of avoidance.

So now that the dog days of summer are upon us, perhaps you too can find a day or more to gain some new perspectives, rejuvenate the creative process, and tap into some previously undiscovered resources. Don’t think of it as time away, so much as time devoted to being present in the world. Happy trails!